- Bad. My 3yr old knows how the Nationwide commercial ends…including the agent's name. Too much TV. #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash – $9,100 in Cash and Amazing Prizes http://bt.io/DZMa #
- Watching the horrible offspring of Rube Goldberg and the Grim Reaper: The Final Destination. #
- Here's hoping the franchise is dead: #TheFinalDestination #
- Wow. Win7 has the ability to auto-hibernate in the middle of installing updates. So much for doing that when I leave for the day. #
- This is horribly true: Spending Other People's Money by @thefinancebuff http://is.gd/75Xv2 #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "You can end half your troubles immediately by no longer permitting people to tell you what you want." ~ Vernon Howard #
- RT @BSimple: The most important thing about goals is having one. Geoffry F. Abert #
- RT @fcn: "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." — Winston Churchill #
- RT @FrugalYankee: FRUGAL TIP: Who knew? Cold water & salt will get rid of onion smell on hands. More @ http://bit.ly/WkZsm #
- Please take a moment and vote for me. (4 Ways to Flog the Inner Impulse Shopper) http://su.pr/2flOLY #
- RT @mymoneyshrugged: #SOTU 2011 budget freeze "like announcing a diet after winning a pie-eating contest" (Michael Steel). (via @LesLafave) #
- RT @FrugalBonVivant: $2 – $25 gift certificates from Restaurant.com (promo code BONUS) http://bit.ly/9mMjLR #
- A fully-skilled clone would be helpful this week. #
- @krystalatwork What do you value more, the groom's friendship or the bride's lack of it?Her feelings won't change if you stay home.His might in reply to krystalatwork #
- I ♥ RetailMeNot.com – simply retweet for the chance to win an Apple iPad from @retailmenot – http://bit.ly/retailmenot #
- Did a baseline test for February's 30 Day Project: 20 pushups in a set. Not great, but not terrible. Only need to add 80 to that nxt month #
Quality Time – The Best Way to Enjoy Time With Your Kids
- Image via Wikipedia
It’s hard to know your kids.
We live in a world of constant distraction. Working full time, chasing the kids to whatever activities they’re enrolled in, play-dates, and other commitments all conspire to chase you away from the one thing that truly matters: your family. It’s not enough to be merely present, you have to be engaged.
How can you carve some time out of your hectic schedule to spend time that your kids will never forget?
We play a lot of games in my family and we start far younger than the recommended ages on any of the games we own. I taught my oldest kid to play chess when he was 4 and he caught on well enough to teach his grandmother within a few months. If a game doesn’t require reading, the recommended age is complete fiction. A two-year-old can count, so Sorry! is a good game. 5-year-olds can add, so Monopoly is a good choice that reinforces math skills.
To keep it fun, we have a few generic rules for playing games.
1. We play for blood. Nobody gets to win a game without earning it. It took my son 5 years to beat me in a game of chess. Two years later, he’s still bragging about it.
2. Losers don’t cry. Sportsmanship is important. It’s no fun to play with someone who throws a tantrum for losing. My son’s friends learned that lesson in a hurry.
3. If you’re not a good winner, you won’t play the next game. We talk a little smack when we play, but it’s only in fun. When someone gets mean, their gaming privileges get suspended.
4. The TV is off. We don’t need more distractions. No TV, no texting, no phone, no nothing. Game time is about family time, not about letting the outside world in. Guard this time with your life. I even hesitate to bring in other friends.
5. Video games don’t count. You get far less interaction when you’re staring at a screen. The goal is to have a good conversation while you’re playing and really get to know your family. You can’t do that when the only words coming out of your mouth are “Ack! Zombie Nazis! Shoot him!”
Board games and card games are relatively inexpensive. Settlers of Catan costs less than a trip to the movies. The games don’t wear out quickly, though we are on our third copy of Phase 10. For the price and the time, you don’t have any excuses.
How do you spend time with your kids?
Budgeting Sucks
Budgeting kind of sucks.
Filling out a budgeting spreadsheet, putting in all of your expenses, listing all of your income, tracking all of your spending. Yuck.
Balancing the fact that you may have $200 to spare, but if your gas bill is a bit lower one month then you have a some more money, but if your electric bill’s a little bit high, then you have a little bit less. It’s too much work.
Here’s the new plan:
I just opened up a new credit card. This credit card’s got a fairly high limit, not that I care since I’m never going to come close to the limit. It’s got an okay interest rate, not that I care–it’s going to be paid off every month. It also has a good travel rewards plan, so our family vacations can, to a large extent, be paid for.
Now, with this card, I’m taking all of my regular bills, and setting them up to be automatically paid by the credit card. It’ll get automatically charged every month. I won’t have to think about it. Once a month, I’ll just log on and pay off the card. All I have to do is make sure the balance stays under my monthly budgeted amount. I already know what I have to be paying each month, so, no problem.
This will make it easier to budget and track my actual spending. It’ll even make it easier to balance my checkbook, since right now, I’m logging into my bank account a couple of times a month to compare it to Quicken. Any budget helper is nice.
After this plan takes effect, my bank account will only have any ATM withdrawals that I need to make–which shouldn’t happen more than once or twice a month–and my checks to day care. There should be just six manual transactions every month plus all of my miscellaneous transfers to and from INGDirect, which should also be minimal– there should only be two of those each month.
This will simplify everything while at the same time giving me the maximum amount of travel rewards I’ve been able to find. Hopefully, it will work as well as I think it will.
How come my back hurts?
My favorite book series is the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. It’s a good sword-and-sorcery, good-versus-evil fantasy.
But I’m not here to talk about that series. Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.
There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving. Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work. That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way. Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.
So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward. This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.
This is the conversation that follows:
Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”
“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”
If it was luck, how come my back hurts?
Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.”
I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job. I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.
By fell into, I mean:
- I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
- I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
- When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job. The first one is the hardest.
- I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
- I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
- I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach. He happened to move to the company I’m with.
- I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
- He offered me a job.
That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck. How come my back hurts?
I have a friend on disability. He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals. He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop. He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies. And he complains about his bad luck.
His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically. His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.
I have another friend who made some bad decisions young. Some years ago, he decided that was over. He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble. When the bubble popped, so did his business. Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.
He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal. His coworkers whined about it. He’s so lucky. If it was luck, why does his back hurt?
We make our own luck.
If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead. When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.
When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”
Beating High Drug Costs – OR – A Primer on Smuggling
Please assume that this post is fiction. I am in no way saying that I have broken the law or advocating that others do so.
First of all, I am actually a fan of expensive drug prices. Drug companies invest billions into research and development and have a relatively short window of time to recoup that cost before their patents expire. That means new drugs are funded through expensive medicines. Without that hefty price tag, we wouldn’t get ground-breaking medicine.
However, when my doctor gives me a prescription that costs $1000, it gives my a serious pause. Yes, that’s for what’s supposed to last 9 months(in reality, about 6), but that’s still a huge chunk of change.
But what are the alternatives?
Some people go to Mexico or Canada for medicine.
Me? I went to alldaychemist.com (Ed. This is not an ad. They don’t pay me anything. I pay them). For real. At least,a hypothetical, fictional for real. ADC is an Indian pharmacy. In India, an awful lot of non-narcotic medicines aren’t considered controlled substances, so they can be sold under different rules than in the US. For example, you can buy antibiotics over the counter or through the mail, legally. At least legally there.
I placed my fictional order using a credit card I don’t use for anything. It is an Indian company, after all. I also won’t give them my bank account information to do a wire transfer, like they would prefer. That would be stupid.
Once an order is placed, it is manually approved, usually within a few hours, depending on time differences and their office hours.
From there, your package is shipped within a could of days. As soon as it hits the New Delhi postal system, you can track the package.
The biggest time delay is customs in the US. That adds about 2 weeks to the shipping time. If, for some reason, customs rejects the package, ADC will ship another right away, but that’s pretty unlikely. Customs has better things to do than inspect every tiny box that comes through. Unless you set up a commercial distribution system (read: drug dealer), you really don’t have anything to worry about.
Are the drugs legit?
Yes. My imaginary order has been doing exactly what I was expecting it to do over the months I’ve been using it.
At 1/100th of the domestic price, it’s totally worth it, you just have to order the medicine about 3 weeks before you need it.
Say Please
This is a guest post/reader story from a good friend of mine.
Greetings,
As a long time reader of Live Real Now, I’ve enjoyed the advice and the step by step, “I’ve been there” advice from Jason. Sadly, until now I haven’t really taken much of it. It was too much work. It was too hard. But the recent “Future Me” post really struck home so I looked for something that should be easy.
What I found was the concept of “Call and Ask”. I took a look at all of my accounts and utilities to decide which ones I was willing to change, drop, or reduce. The two I came up with were Dish Network and CenturyLink DSL.
My plan was simple:
- Look for their introductory offers
- Compare to my current price
- Call
- Ask if existing customers are as important as NEW customers
- Finally, be nice!
I started with CenturyLink since I needed to call them for a new modem in anyway. We’ve been with CenturyLink for years and I’ve been paying $34.99 for slow DSL and using it a couple times a week to work from home. Their new customer promotion is $19.99 for the faster service. I’d love to give you my script but I don’t entirely remember what I said. I believe I asked if they would extend the new customer rate to me and for how long. I know I pointed out that I would be out 3-5 days of internet service so now was the time to start trying to lower my bills. The customer service rep was actually pretty cool about it.
“Let me look at your account. We can offer you that rate for 12 months. After that the rate will be $54.99.”
That seems like a short term win for a long term loss, right?
His followup comment was golden: “Call us back in 12 months and see what specials we can offer you then.” So I went into Google Calendars and set myself a reminder 10.5 months from now.
Net effect: $15/month saved.
Next step: Dish Network.
We’re getting the Family Package which is already pretty inexpensive for Dish. Looking around, the new subscriber price was $5 less.
Same plan.
“Hello, I’m a long term subscriber. I see that you’re offering new subscribers the same package for less. Could you extend that offer to me?”
Same response… “Sure, you can have a $5 discount for 6 months.” Again, I set a Google Calendar reminder, this time for 4.5 months out.
Net effect: $20/month saved.
Can this go farther?
I recently purchased 3 pairs of F.O.M work jeans from Duluth Trading Company. Yes, they’re expensive, but they fit and last a long time. I’m not a small guy. (Ed. Welcome to the club!) Anyway, at the time their sale looked good: $10 off each pair when you order 3 or more. Coincidentally, I was down to a single pair after a deer hunting accident. (Don’t tie your jeans into your boots while field dressing a deer. You’ll stretch and then things get a bit breezy.) With $5 shipping, I saved $35 on that order for jeans I needed anyway.
I thought I’d done pretty well.
Fast forward to today where I see 20% off on everything and free shipping. And they’re still offering the $10 off deal I already used. I called Duluth Trading Company, and explained I was VERY happy with their pants and enjoyed the sale but was wondering if they’d please extend the 20% off sale to my prior order since it was so recent.
$23.70 back in my account.
Easy as pie and a polite: “Thank you for offering us the chance to make you happy with the transaction, sir.”
So, 3 nice phone calls, net effect:
Immediate: $23.70 in my pocket
Short term: $30 savings over the next 6 months
Long Term: $180 Savings over the next year
Total Savings: $233.75 for 15 minutes work
